And these people define the public interest? Spare me.

The testimony given to the Leveson inquiry this week by former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan was as dramatic as it was banal. The journalist who had worked for seven years at News of the World gave evidence for nearly two hours, in which he spoke candidly about the practices employed by reporters to get a story.

His testimony raised once again the anachronistic question of moral standards in tabloid news outlets. According to McMullan, editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson were "scum" who had endorsed what became endemic practices of phone hacking and who later denied any knowledge of it. For McMullan the "well meaning" journalists who were involved in the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone had "honourable" intentions. The real degenerate criminals were Brooks and Coulson, whose immorality lay not in the wholesale practice of phone hacking but rather, in screwing the "little men", the poor hacks with good intentions who, in the face of police incompetence, were "only trying to find the girl". The misunderstood News of the World soldiers on a noble journalistic mission, betrayed by the big bosses when the shit hit the fan. It is hard to find a more absurd exercise in moral relativism by such a cheerful and defiant inhabitant of a realm beyond the boundaries of fundamental moral criteria.

McMullan, clearly a hard-bitten hack who, in the "glory days when it was so much fun before Diana died" got off on the thrill of the "sport", is clearly not the best gauge of journalistic standards and should his testimony (among others) be the basis of tighter media regulation, there is reason for concern. But unfortunately neither McMullan nor News of the World reflect isolated exceptions; rather they show us the logical consequence of standard tabloid behaviour based on journalistic bullying. News of the World represents the darkest depth of this culture and as yet no other paper has sunk as low. This is not to say they won't and the prevailing tabloid news ethos indicates that they are treading a very fine line.

Since the hacking scandal emerged, questions of public interest, privacy and press freedom have provided the analytical framework for much of the public debate. McMullan's testimony pointed to some of the more challenging aspects of what has become an increasingly cynical discussion of what constitutes the public interest. McMullan argued that it is the public who should be the final arbiters of the content provided by the media, claiming that "the public are clever enough to be judge and jury for what goes on in newspapers". What legitimises unsavoury journalistic practices is the public "appetite" for trash – acquired by any means necessary.

In an article published this year in The Drum, Brendan O'Neill made the same argument, writing that the "liberal ... Murdoch-maulers" now had to come to terms with the very uncomfortable fact that "the journalism they had branded as Not In The Public Interest – that is, the News of the World's various hacked stories about celebs' sexual shenanigans – certainly seemed to be quite interesting to the public". Indeed, O'Neill wrote that News of the World "was Britain's best-read newspaper, staining the fingers of an estimated 7.5 million people every Sunday". The only reliable indicator then, is sales figures. According to the logic of O'Neill and McMullan the measure of the public interest is the money we spend, its real measure is consumption. And so consumption becomes a form of election.

Of course the size of the chip on O'Neill's shoulder rivals only that of McMullan's, the culture of victimhood at News of the World is not lost on O'Neill, the self-proclaimed perennial "little man". It is a uniquely vile and dangerous combination of self-righteous arrogance and a sense of victimhood which can produce such a cynical argument. And it is an argument which amounts to little more than an endorsement of corporate power. For O'Neill public interest is simply a cover for what people trust the least – the liberal state. It follows that Murdoch is just a para-phenomenon of postmodern corrupt liberalism, that is, an innocent product of a corrupt society.

Underneath this critique made by those who defend the practices of phone hacking and the attitude of tabloid journalists, while attacking the attempts by the liberal state, or in O'Neill's words "small groups of high-minded, well-educated people deciding behind closed doors, what they think is good for the public", is a deep-seated fear of any kind of collective choice. The invocation of sales figures of tabloid papers as the measure of public interest is as disingenuous as it is cynical.

In this question of public interest the influence of Murdoch is malign, not simply because the empire is so vast but because he is as concerned with directing the "public interest" as is O'Neill’s "high-minded", political and intellectual "elite". The difference of course is with an estimated 7.5 million readers buying the News of the World every Sunday, the power to dictate public interest rests largely in the hands of the Murdoch empire.

Just as a media inquiry may threaten to corrupt the circulation of ideas so too does the tabloid press, which disguises its deeply ideological mode behind calls for press freedom, the abolition of privacy (in the words of McMullan "privacy is for paedos") and a monopoly on the public interest. The fundamental problem with the argument around public interest, in defence of Murdoch's media monopoly, is that it presents a false choice. Does buying a copy of the Herald Sun for instance, in remote parts of a country where 70% of print media sales are Murdoch papers reflect a fully autonomous free choice? Those like O'Neill and McMullan prefer to remain in the realm of the particular: it being easier to ignore the overarching question of the meta-choice, enabling the continued functioning of the façade of free choice.

McMullan's testimony this week is of value not simply because it reveals the extent of the culture which permeates tabloid outlets like News of the World. More importantly it reveals an indifference to social and moral values in those who ultimately seek to define the public interest.

Mira Adler-Gillies is completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne on the Paris Commune and the French left.

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